third grade oral health lesson plan
THINK BEFORE YOU DRINK
Overview:
Students may be surprised to learn how much sugar is in popular
drinks and how this hidden sugar can damage their teeth.
Supplies:
•
Six clear disposable plastic cups
•
One 12 ounce can of dark soda pop
•
One 16 ounce can of a popular energy drink
•
One 15 ounce bottle of apple juice
•
A teaspoon measuring spoon
•
White sugar in a bowl—about 5 cups
Steps:
1. Before lesson: use a marker to label three cups with the
three different drink names. Use the teaspoon to measure
the sugar in the soda pop, energy drink, and apple juice into
the three labeled plastic cups. To determine the number of
teaspoons of sugar in each drink, divide the total grams of
sugar in the container by 4.2 (most dark cola will have 42
grams of sugar or 10 teaspoons of sugar, most energy drinks
are about 62 grams of sugar or nearly 15 teaspoons of sugar,
and the apple juice at 49 grams of sugar will have nearly 12
teaspoons of sugar).
2. Place the cups with the sugar where the students cannot
see them.
3. Label the remaining three cups with the drink names and put
each cup in front of the corresponding drink containers. Place
the large bowl of sugar and the teaspoon beside the drinks.
4. Show students the drinks. Explain that these are popular drinks,
but that they may not know how much sugar is in each drink.
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5. One at a time, have three student volunteers come up and
use the teaspoon to spoon the amount of sugar they think is
in the drink into the corresponding cup.
6. Bring out the three cups with the correct amount of sugar
and place them by the cups the students filled with sugar.
7. Discuss—did the students guess the correct amount of sugar,
or more, or less sugar than was actually in the drink? Were
they surprised at the amount of sugar in any of the drinks?
Point out the number of servings in each of the containers and
ask students if they would stop drinking after one serving or
if they would drink the whole container. Ask students if they
were surprised at how much sugar is in the apple juice.
Discuss whether drink commercials and billboards advertise
more healthy drinks or more sugary drinks. Have students
brainstorm how they can make healthier drink choices and
encourage others to make healthier drink choices.
8. Wrap up the discussion by talking about how we often don’t
realize how much sugar is in our drinks, but it harms our
teeth just as if we were eating candy. Ask students what they
could do to prevent tooth decay from sugar in drinks (choose
drinks such as milk or water, brush teeth twice a day for
two minutes each time, see the dentist, eat fruit instead of
drinking fruit juice, etc.).
Extension/Adaptations:
Have students keep a drink log for a week and record what they
drink and the amount of sugar in the drinks. At the end of the
week students can journal about their drink choices. Students
could also graph their daily sugar intake from their drinks and set
a goal to reduce the amount of sugar in their drinks if it is high.
A few drink logs could be chosen and a week’s worth of sugar
could be measured out to show the class.
National Health Education Standards: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8
Delta Dental of North Carolina
These lesson plans were developed by the McMillen Center for Health Education.
Delta Dental-BF-Lesson Plans-Third Grade-NC
PA 3/13